Jerusalem Commands: Between the Wars Vol. 3

  But can expansive Carthage ever leave Europe in peace? She sends Turkish and Tunisian guest-workers through the whole of Northern Europe. Now Ali Baba and Sinbad are heroes as familiar in Stockholm as Lohengrin and Tannhäuser once were. But has the musselman in his turn adopted our chivalric epics? Do Lancelot and Parsival thrill the blood of little boys in Baghdad and Bengazi? An honest answer tells the whole story. Carthage forbids anything save her own legend. She is paramount. Carthage conquers inch by inch. Half the slogans on the Ladbroke Grove walls are in unreadable languages. The wall is all that is left to the unheard, the unenfranchised, the silenced of this world. Why has the spray-can replaced the ballot-paper? Perhaps because people are informed by a natural will to evil and chaos, but I think it more likely that they are moved by the knowledge that nowhere in the halls of power is their opinion represented. I do not blame them for losing faith in their constitutions. I do blame them, however, for turning their backs on God.

  It was the same in the camps. Half of them ignored the obvious facts of their situation. It was how they had come there in the first place. And then it was too late. Only those who accepted the realities survived. There is little room for sentiment in Camp Freedom, as our old commandant used to remind us. Sentiment is what led us to our present predicament. Ikh bin eyn Luftmeister. Der Flugzeugführer sitzt im Führersitz ... I shall come back to the City of the Golden Dream.

  The pain starts in my stomach. It reaches my mouth. I did not become a Musselman. What more could they want from me? I wore their stripes. I wore their star. Even though their punishment was unjust I performed my work. It had been my fate forever to be condemned and identified not through any action of my own, but through the careless decision of a father whom I hardly knew. But that I suppose is what becomes of the child of a free-riding Cossack when left too long in the care of its mother. I do not blame my mother, I hasten to say, but it is probably true she made me a little over-sensitive. Those stripes. Brodmann gloated. Grishenko raised his quirt. So that I should not forget the sacrifice of my friend Yermeloff. Then he gave me my pistols, ebony and silver. Those bars. Nobody blamed me for what I did in Kiev. Those people tear the skins from corpses. They carve their initials in the bodies. Their only sensation of living comes when they are performing some complicated act of cruelty on another wretched soul. And this we were told was to be the century of enlightenment!

  Today on the television they discuss the problem of leisure. What leisure is that? We are all clearly on the brink of a new Dark Age but they discuss the party arrangements in paradise! They say I am mentally disturbed! Is there any aspect of their lives which is actually better than the lives of their forefathers? Their fathers had hope, at least. This generation looks into the future and sees only decay and dissolution.

  Cautiously I checked that the sack really did contain only my film canisters, then I glanced back through the car’s window at Djema al Fna’a. As the twilight folded over the people and the yellow radiance of oil and tallow gave the scene the quality of Flemish paint, I wondered at this luscious ordinariness. It was unfortunate, I thought, there were no Arab old masters. An over-literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis is the reason for that. These people embrace rules the way most of us embrace life. The more rules they have, the more comfortable they are. I told this to that ill-tempered hysteric in the Post Office, that Pakistanischer. He behaves as if the Postmaster General is some Oriental tyrant who will behead anyone for the slightest use of their own initiative. Or is the man merely exercising his power?

  As our car eased its way through the gateway and out onto the Route du Safi, the wide new road that led up to the darkened military train yards beyond the Villa Marjorelle, a big Mercedes tourer swung across our path, forcing the driver to stop. A pistol was waved from the passenger window and then a small man descended from the tourer and crossed to where we were stopped, our engine still running. He held a tray: on it were ink, pen and paper.

  I picked up the pen and the Mercedes reversed to allow the taxi to pass. As soon as I had signed and returned the paper the Mercedes turned and was gone. It was only another five minutes to the railroad yards, but, with Mr Mix’s puzzlingly cool company, it seemed longer. There was no great activity in the yards. A few lights blazed in huts on the other side of the fence and the huge black sleeping outlines of military locomotives and goods wagons were everywhere. The place lacked the urgency of a commercial yard. Our car was allowed through the gates on the driver’s presentation of a pass already provided by the unfortunate Fromental. He drove towards the buildings on the other side of the tracks but I tapped him on the shoulder. We would stop here, I said. I gave him my last spare French banknote. Then Jacob Mix and I left the car and found the deeper shadows of the big trains. My bag was proving heavy and the films, loose in the sack, were awkward for Mr Mix, but we kept a firm, almost desperate, grip on my remaining belongings. They were all we had to get us to Tangier and from there to Europe. The Pasha or his vizier could change their minds at any moment and send soldiers in pursuit.

  Fromental did not remain in the army, I heard. Someone told me he had made a great success running a radio business in Lyons (home of our Christian Testament) so in fact events were fortunate for him. Apparently he was shot by the Germans in 1943. When I heard this news I could not suppress a pang of sadness, remembering his bright enthusiastic face, his honest idealism. We had much in common. I have always said that the honour the Christian values highest is the honour of honest chivalry above so-called manly courage. Fromental is in honour now, no doubt a martyr. I think when we meet he will want to shake me by the hand.

  Once we had got our bearings, we began to examine the trains with our expert eyes. Both of us had learned every trick of the American railroad bum, and the French authorities had never had to contend with a skilled hobo before. It was not long before we had identified the locomotive we wanted. It was already making steam and it was clear from the markings on its trucks that it was bound for Casablanca. From Casablanca we could easily transfer to Tangier, the Free City where neither Moroccan nor French law prevailed. Then we could get any one of a dozen ships to take us to Genoa. From Genoa we would be within easy reach of Rome.

  Mr Mix found an unlocked door and slid it smoothly back. As we climbed into the truck we admired the modern rolling-stock, so much better maintained than civilian trains and then, with the security of familiarity we settled down, upon the slats, to sleep until our educated senses detected the first movements of the train. At that point we must be on the alert, in case of examiners finding us. But these trains made few of the sounds we were used to. Every so often a huge gasp of steam would fill the night, to be followed at once by further silence.

  I sent up a prayer for Rosie von Bek, hoping she had managed to pilot the Bee all the way to Rome. I remembered Kolya and offered up a small prayer, too, for his safety. I thought of Esmé, my sister, my daughter, and how in the end she had failed to rise to my hopes. Yet I could not entirely condemn her. For a few years her life had been filled with a wonder and luxury, elegance and quality she would never have known had I left her to live out her days as a mere Galata whore. I still celebrated her loveliness, her quality of innocence, her child-like beauty. I still loved her.

  At dawn the wagon rattled forward a few metres. I braced myself. It shuddered to a stop. We heard whistles and yells. The train shunted backwards for several revolutions of her pistons and then subsided, sniffing and hissing in a petulant undertone. We heard the locomotive giving off great masculine snorts and wheezes of impatience, like an old but dignified bulldog full of panting excitement at an outing. Suddenly I knew a moment of regret for all my lost expectations, all the pointless idealism I had invested in this world. Was it not thoroughly ironic we should be on our way to seek refuge in the ancient site of Carthage herself, to Tangier?

  But perhaps it is true, and you are always safer in the cage when a lion is on the loose.

  Meyn strerfener. Meyne herzenslust. br />
  Ya muh annin, ya rabb. Meyn siostra, meyn rosa. Allah yeftah ‘alek.

  Hallan, amshi ma’uh. A’ud bi-rabb el-falaq. Ma shey y sharr in sha. ‘Awiz minni ey? ‘Awiz minni ey?

  ‘Awiz minni ey?

  At last we were moving. There had been no check of our truck. As it rolled forward, sunlight shone through the slats of the roof and made bars of intense black and white on a floor still carrying recent traces of straw and excrement but now stinking of carbolic. The procession of stripes undulated over my sprawled body, like some ethereal tide, while Mr Mix’s face was thrown alternatively into vivid light and sudden darkness. Through the stink of the disinfectant and the heating engine oil I smelled for the last time the warm mint-flavoured air of Marrakech as the red city faded behind us and the train began its long climb through the gorges of the Atlas. There was a reassuring and familiar rhythm to the bumping of the wheels over the rails and I was able to reach into my bag to find one of my small packets of restorif. I offered Mr Mix a comradely thumbnail of the cheering drug, which he refused, saying he planned to sleep. We should be all day getting to Casablanca. With luck we would arrive at night. Otherwise we should have to wait to disembark at dark. It was October 28, 1929. In a few months I would be thirty. I planned to celebrate the event in Rome.

  But soon I had grown melancholy thinking of those wonderful monsters waiting for the engines that would never come. French imperial politics and the Pasha’s failure to control his own emotions meant my beautiful machines must now become museum pieces. I still, however, had a number of my expensive catalogues, though, sadly, only the Arabic version, not the French. I thought of my Desert Liner and what wealth it might have created for the whole region. I would have made their desert green. Now they would have to wait, perhaps for ever. El Glaoui’s loss would be Il Duce’s gain. Within a couple of weeks I would be dining with my old friends at The Wasp. I told Mr Mix he would fall in love with the city. It was the crucible of our finest institutions.

  Across the truck, as the train speeded up, I saw his great amiable African face grinning through the flickering stripes of our temporary prison giving our reality the effect of an early kinema film. I remarked on this. The rattle of the bogies might almost have been the clatter of a projector. It was the strangest illusion.

  I fumed at those who had conspired to ruin both our careers and condemn us to such unjust humiliation. I was not even sure, I said, if I had enough money to get a decent passage on the ship to Italy, let alone buy some reasonable clothes. Already I was smelling of cow-dung. ‘I hear Rome is very fashion-conscious, these days.’ We could not be expected to parade through the Holy City like evil-smelling extras from The Desert Song. Besides, I did not expect our djellabahs to last the journey.

  ‘Look at the stitching on this garment,’ I said. ‘It’s of the cheapest quality. Not a double seam on the whole thing. Scarcely a fair exchange for a bag of English gold!’

  Slap-happy as ever, the big black suddenly began to roar with laughter. I could not understand this at all. I thought at first he had given in to the hysteria to which his race is prone, but then it seemed he was doing nothing more than trumpet his considerable relief at being free of the Pasha’s torture-chamber. I told him I was proud to see he was taking his hardships so well. Not all his race were so resilient. He need not fear in Europe, I assured him. I would be there to help. If anyone insulted him in the Eternal City they must answer to me!

  At this he uttered a further wild burst of mirth, declaring that knowing me made a man believe in miracles. ‘Max, you are the luckiest bastard in the whole damned universe. I never heard of anybody with your kind of luck. From now until we get back to civilisation I’m going to stick to you like a fly to fresh paint.’

  I was a little baffled. ‘What “luck” are you talking about, Mr Mix? I think you mean “judgement”, surely! If I hadn’t had the presence of mind to mention the name of one of England’s most powerful and least-known men we should still be languishing in the Glaoui jail, or writhing at the first tender touch of St Paul’s Pincers.’ I felt sick. I could almost smell our burning flesh. ‘Is that “luck”?’ I pulled my Georgian pistols from my bag to make sure no harm had come to them.

  He did his best to control himself. He turned his head and let his chin settle upon his chest. But it was clear he had not really understood me.

  ‘Luck?’ I was still incredulous. From what sort of skewed illusion could the schwartze be suffering? ‘Haven’t you noticed, Mr Mix, that we are once again reduced to the discomforts of a cattle car?’

  Clearly the terrors of the past few days had taken their toll. The poor fellow’s mind had snapped. His head flung up, his scarlet mouth gaping, he shook with feverish mirth, and as the locomotive pulled us relentlessly into the High Atlas I became miserably reconciled to the certainty that he would still be roaring even when we passed at last through the golden gates of Rome.

  * * * *

  APPENDIX

  (The following transcript is taken from material not supplied by Colonel Pyat but given by him to Miss Christine Brunner who kindly gave permission to reproduce it here.

  - M.M.)

  If T’hami had aided Abd el-Krim in 1925, there would have been no foreign protector still in Morocco. Instead the tribes and the political rivals and the religious rivals and the blood rivals and the trade rivals would have returned to their time-honoured custom of dog eat foolish dog, and T’hami, almost reluctantly no doubt, would have emerged at last, encrusted with the blood of a hundred thousand innocents, as Tyrant of Morocco, the first true Islamic Dictator, to shake hands with his brothers in Europe. And with T’hami as an ally, would Christendom any longer have to fear Carthage? I think T’hami would have extended his Empire eastwards, yet never losing friendship with the West, gradually building a single nation from Casablanca to Suez, which would have formed a bulwark of Islamic chivalry against the savagery of the East and of Africa. If the French had allowed him his own air force rather than taking an active part in dissuading him from this policy, for one moment in history Carthage might have chosen to become the ally of Christ rather than the right hand of the Anti-Christ. It would not, in the end, be dreaming Carthage who was responsible for our defeat, but sleeping Christendom, ever ready to pacify the common enemy who had already devoured Russia, was about to devour half Europe and the mightiest nation of the East. Fromental was right to be suspicious of Islam but wrong to suspect T’hami. Now Carthage is Bolshevism’s puppy-dog just as Britain is America’s. These are the years of greed, the years of warring for the sake of war, for the sake of power alone. These are the terrible years of regression, before the final battle, when brute shall belabour brute back into the mud from which so many millions of years before we emerged. Is this to be our story? Shall this unchecked power, this irresponsible power, this profoundly pagan power, rise and rise until Christ Himself is crushed? What must we do to warn them of their folly? What can we say to them that will remind them of God’s will at the moment they see their little child’s head split like an egg under some devil’s panga? We have a duty to our religion. It brought us our wealth and our security. We have a duty to practise that religion in the name of the Son of God; a duty to live lives of maximum value to God and Man. This I have tried to do personally and I continue, in God’s name, to shoulder my responsibilities, to warn the world of what they must face if they fail to take up the Christian burden, to make that Pilgrimage of the soul through the Valley of Dread and into the light of Heaven. Each pilgrimage is personal, each private as prayer, as we ready ourselves for the perfection our Redeemer has promised. But even if we follow His path there are many who would lead us astray. I will admit I was lured into temptation during the twenties and thirties, but they were confusing times and I blame no one for what happened then, least of all myself. The Jew and the Moslem will do this, if they can. It is an instinct with them, to gnaw like Satan’s rats at the very roots of our Faith!

  * * * *

  You
have the press, the politicians and manners of a people who have lost their self-respect - you have everything you deserve. And unless you remember how to follow your best instincts you will never again find that self-respect.

  I once asked the Bishop if he thought it was possible for a white man genuinely to love a black man like a brother and he said he thought it might prove an illusion in the end, because of the social pressures. Other church people have not been able to answer this question. Race is not everything, I think. After all, I owe my life to a Jew in Arcadia. It was not he who put a piece of metal in my womb, nor sowed that dreadful seed in me, nor libelled me, nor humiliated me, nor betrayed me. I am not antiSemite, I tell them, I am merely antisceptic. But they never understand these plays on words. The arts of irony and innuendo are lost to those who abuse the freedoms of democracy. Mrs Cornelius thinks I am too broad-minded for my own good but that is the way I was born, I said. What can I do? Wie lange wird es dauern? ‘I’ll get my reward in Heaven,’ I tell her. Da ma yekhessanash . . .

  ‘And I’ll be right beside yer, Ivan,’ she says. I used to think her mysterious laughter, which had little to do with what she said, a sign of her senility but now I think it has something to do with anxiety. I tell her she should see a doctor. NO! This is not God! NO! She lies to me. She lies to me. They must not hurt me not hurt me so. God made me promise. I did not do those things. Those things make me sick. It is not fair. I am justice and of the Just but I denied my birthright and God cursed me with blindness. I denied my people and God cursed me with the gift of lies. I would not listen to my father and God ordained that I should believe only untruths. For it is written that God shall make such just punishment upon any of the Just that shall err from his purpose. I am the lamb and the blood is my blood. He loved me in Odessa. He put a piece of metal in my womb. I have done what is unclean and I have repented. Anubis is my friend. Dieser letzte weiche Kuss, Esmé. Es war ein Schlag in den Unterleib. Ich kann noch immer die Stelle spiiren. Ein Reitgerte hebt sich und saust herab. Sie ist von jener grausamen Flut aus Asche mitgerissen worden. Sie ist ein Gespenst. Ein kinemaqueen.